Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Puzzles

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Puzzles 

https://lindaghill.com/2021/09/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-18-2021/

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Thanks for the SOCS prompts every week, Linda!

To join in and also see other entries, just click the above link.

Here’s what we are challenged with today:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “puzzle.” Use it any way you’d like!

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I’m a fan of all kinds of puzzles, the exception being those stated logic puzzles and the math kind like Sudoku ones. Can’t get those at all.

For a long time we were working jigsaw puzzles, which I posted a lot of the finished pictures as we went along. But, it’s been a couple of years since we worked any, though we have a bunch of new ones we haven’t even opened yet. We were working them on a really large heavy poster board on the kitchen table. Then eventually the table got filled up with other things of paper work. We’d have to clear all that off, with no where to put it if we were to get out another puzzle.

I’ve always liked crosswords either in the little magazines or the newspapers. I have a lot of the books, but we don’t take the newspaper any more.

Other puzzles I used to like was those manipulative kind you’d get in a kid’s magician’s kit. I’d also buy the different kinds that grown ups try to work and I’d find them at yard sales.

When I was going through some boxes of stuff of my granny’s after she passed on, I found this 8 foot long crossword puzzle she’d filled in a lot of the squares.

My grand-ma showed me how to work the skeleton puzzles in those little magazines. That was when I was a kid, and the first pencil puzzles I remember doing.

After that there was no stopping me … years and years of pencil puzzle fun!

Here’s what I wrote one time:

This is a giant crossword puzzle that says it’s 8 feet long! It’s squares are almost all filled in, I’m thinking by my granny. She was a dedicated crossword puzzle fan, and always had one going, either from books of them, or from the newspapers. She was serious about working them, and used a crossword dictionary all the time, too. She’d get her reading glasses on, and not stop until they were done, even if they were difficult.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

 

Doodles & Dreams

Doodles & Dreams

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This is a drawing of an elephant I did a long time ago. It has lots of flowery designs inside the outline of the elephant. Then I wrote these words all around – Good Luck, Love, Peace, Light.

Click on the photo to enlarge. 🙂

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Dream

April 16, 2007

I was putting red dye on my hair, but first I had to spread it on some paper (2), like those Bingo sheets. It kept drying out too fast. Then I put it all over my hair, but forgot to time it.

I think I left it on about 2 hours! While waiting I think I went somewhere. People looked at me funny, but oh well … then I came home and people came over. I decided to rinse it off in the sink, so I did.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

Throwback Thursday – Learning to Drive

Throwback Thursday – Learning to Drive
Welcome to the first edition of the Throwback Thursday Memory BlogHop where we take on a nostalgic object, event, or memory and blog about it.

Every Thursday, Maggie from cave walls will alternate hosting with Lauren from LSS Attitude of Gratitude. We will post a blog with the title Throwback Thursday  – subject of the week. (This week the subject is Learning to Drive.)

in your post and tag it with #TBTMemory or #IRememberWhen to make it easier for others to find.

https://fromcavewalls.wordpress.com/2021/08/26/throwback-thursday-learning-to-drive/

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To take part in this challenge, just click the link above for details.

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Let’s see … I took driving education when I was in school, probably 9th grade. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, since it’s been so long ago!

We had an instructor, who was a regular school teacher, and there was a special car we used to practice with. It was funny, because it was normal on the driver’s side, but on the front passenger side where the teacher sat, he had all the same controls such as the floor pedals and the steering wheel. I suppose that was in case we made a bad mistake and he had to take over real quick. The car was also a standard shift, with the handle up on the steering column.

Anyway, where we practiced was down the highway a ways, at a drive in movie theater parking lot. It was daytime, so the place wasn’t open at that time. There were sort of lanes, and of course the poles we had to dodge around at each parking spot that held the speakers for the movie that you’d attach to your car window when watching a movie. There were three of us kids at a time, and we’d take turns driving up and down the lanes. Later on we went driving on the highway and some in town driving, too.

It was fun, and I didn’t have any trouble learning. I’m sure I studied the handbook to learn the rules of the road, but I don’t remember doing that. At the end of our classes, we were ready to go downtown to take our tests, written and the actual driving with a person that graded us on how we did.

I passed both first time.

Before that, I’d practice driving our old family car, a long Buick station wagon, automatic. I also practiced out at my aunt’s farm driving my uncle’s pick-up truck, shifting gears and all, out on the gravel roads around there.

I didn’t get my own first car until much later, maybe when I was a Jr. or Sr. in high school. It was a 60 something Ford Falcon. Not sure of the year model, maybe 62? My dad bought it for me when I was in high school. It was a standard, where you have to shift gears, but it was on the steering column. I put flower power stickers on the side, so it would be ‘cool’ haha.  I drove it until after I got married and we got the ’65 mustang.

Here’s a couple of photos of me and my first car. It was a dark burgundy color, and I’m acting silly out in the front yard. The next one I’m sitting on the back end and it shows the flower power sticker on the side.

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

 

 

House # 22 – The Last One

House # 22 – The Last One

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This is the house we live in now, and have for over 20 years. Looks like that first photo of the house and yard was taken in the winter or something as there are no leaves on the tree.

This house has three bedrooms, a living room/dining room all in one big area, a smallish kitchen, and two baths and a garage. We’ve put a shed in the back yard, too.

The second photo is a silhouette of a coyote and a cactus that are up on the front white wall. There is a weathered wooden bench below.

The third photo is showing part of the front of the house and is brick. There are actually four cats on the porch when I took this picture. There is our large fruitless Mulberry tree, and a weathered wooden bench under it. Thanks to our former neighbors for building the benches for us!

The fourth photo shows looking from our front yard over to the east and you can see part of the playa lake.

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What to say about the memories of this house – many and of course we are still making them as we live here. We’ve had great neighbors over the years and everyone watches out for everyone else. (Kelly and DB – we miss you living next door!)

This house was built in the 70s and had only one owner before us, and we met them. Nice people, in fact the Mr. was one of my daughter’s teachers in college. So nothing strange about that … but … now for the spooky parts!

I’ve written on this blog about some of the ghostly happenings here before. If you’re interested here are the links:

The Levitating Mirror https://wp.me/p3RE1e-90t

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When Toys Sneak Up On You https://wp.me/p3RE1e-8Ve

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Knife Neighbors https://wp.me/p3RE1e-5KL

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There are lots more smaller incidents over the years. My house ghost loves to keep us guessing. 🙂

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 21

House # 21

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This is the second house we had in Levelland TX. I liked it a lot. It had three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, garage, and one bathroom. There was an apple tree and an apricot tree in the big fenced in back yard, too.

This house was right across the street from a nice park, and just down the street from a graveyard.

The dogs would fight over the apples when the fruit dropped from the trees, as they loved eating them. When they heard one hit the ground they would race over to be the first to get it. haha. They never wanted the apricots, though.

One day we heard a big crash, and a big hawk had crashed into our front window. He was okay, but a little stunned. The Mr. gathered him up and took him over to the park, setting him up on a tree branch. He did finally fly way.

We lost one of the dogs who crossed the rainbow bridge, which was so sad. But we gained a black cat. I found the little kitten in a parking lot and brought him home. He was a good kitty.

I liked how the kitchen was done. It was separated from the dining area by a short bar, and the room was separate from the living room instead of being all one big area. More like an old fashioned farm house kitchen, I guess you’d say.

We were here for awhile, at least a year I’m sure. Funny my daughter reminded me of the addresses of this house and the last one was almost the same – one being 703 and one 307. I’d forgotten that.

Then, we tried again to get a house back in our home town of Lubbock. We went house hunting several weeks, as we were wanting to buy one. Finally, we did find one and signed the papers right before midnight that night. I think (not sure) that our GI loan time period was going to run out to use it at midnight of that last day when we signed.

Then came the part of moving I don’t like. Actually packing up everything and moving it. Ugh what a job!

But we did it, and the next house is the last one. We’ve been in the last one for over 20 years now. 🙂

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 20

House # 20

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Our years at Ft. Hood/Killeen TX were done, as the Mr. retired from the Army. We were moving back to our home town of Lubbock. We looked at houses there, but couldn’t find any we liked, or that would rent to people with pets. At the time we had 4 dogs and a rabbit.

So we went to another smaller town about 30 miles down the road – Levelland TX and found this one. It was pretty nice, a brick, 3 bedroom, kitchen, and living room one. There was a really big shed in the big back yard, too.

This first photo is of the back yard and a part of the shed. There was a covered patio, too, and you can see a couple of our dogs out there. The rabbit was kept out in the shed in his cage, and we’d get big hay bales to scatter around on the floor for the dogs to burrow down into if they wanted.

The second photo is one I got from a google search of the address of the front of the house. We were there for at least a year.

There was one thing that stands out while we were there. Right behind us was a tall pole with the emergency alert system/siren on it. They would run a test at least once a month, with announcements, and blowing the siren for several minutes. Oh my word it was loud! The dogs would be scared and howl.

We’d moved in here on Halloween of that year. haha! Actually, it felt so strange that after living so long on the mostly enclosed community of base housing at Ft. Hood, we were a bit anxious to be out in the ‘wild’ open kind of town. We did finally find our way around the small town.

And then we had to find another house in the town, because the owner of this one we were renting had sold it. So we were out. It didn’t take long though, to find another house.

That will be next time.

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 19

House # 19

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After the Mr. got back from his stint in S. Korea, he was assigned to Ft. Hood TX. The town it’s next to is Killeen TX.  We did live in government housing right there on base in one of the Villages for family housing. It was called Chaffee Village.

I don’t have any good photos of the outside of the house, but this first one is from a google search. Ours looked like this, where it was brick and siding, with a large divided type window. There were two houses connected by a carport.

The second photo is one I took of our front windows. It looks like the girls had taped up Halloween decorations on the window panes.

We lived in this house for almost 10 years. We liked it fine. There were three bedrooms, a large living room/dining room combo, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. We had a huge back yard which we had fenced in, and a couple of large trees in the back yard. One was more of a huge bush that had pretty white flowers growing on it in the summer.

We had a patio where we cooked out sometimes, too. All the neighbors were friendly and all the kids in the neighborhood knew each other and would roam around everywhere. There were activities for all on base. We really liked living here.

A couple of things we got used to by living on a large Army base was helicopters flying over, sometimes landing right by the road, seeing tanks driving down the road was common, the bugle playing of reveille in the early mornings, the playing of taps in the evenings, and soldiers marching here and there.

We also got used to hearing the cannons booming and our windows rattling when the troops were out in the field for training.

One strange incident that happened on more than one occasion was with our phone. It was a phone hung on the wall, with an extra long curly cord. Sometimes this phone’s receiver would just shoot out from the base of the phone, the cord stretched all the way across the room. The phone wasn’t broken at all, and you’d think if it was, it would just drop down to the floor. But no, this was forcefully thrown of it’s own accord. Never knew when it would happen, and just lucky we weren’t hit with it, though we’d just be sitting there when it happened.

Well, I can’t tell ten years of memories in one post here, so moving on … the Mr. retired from the Army after his last overseas post, which was Somalia. The girls and I just stayed here while he was gone.

Then it was time to move again … and we went back to our home town for the last three houses.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 18

House # 18

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The next house we moved to was in Beeville Texas, which is still in the southern part of the state. It wasn’t all that far from the last house, in Sinton, but still in a different city near the coast. The Mr. still worked at the Army Reserve Center in Sinton, just he had to travel a bit farther from this next house to get there.

I don’t have a good picture that I took myself of the house, just this one where I googled the address. It was I guess what you’d call an apartment? There were blocks of houses – 4 each, scattered around. This also shows the parking lot. Ours was in this brick building, but on the far side on the ground floor. There was a little side road beside us, too.

It had two bedrooms, a living room/dining room, a kitchen, a bath, and a laundry room. I think they were fairly new buildings, and pretty nice. We didn’t have carpets and it wasn’t furnished. We did have the pieces of furniture we already had, and we finally got rid of that huge sofa, and bought new living room couch, chair, coffee table, and end tables. Actually we still have the tables we use even now.

This housing area belonged to the government, as  in the Chase Naval Air Station. The actual base was 4 miles up the road, where all the planes, offices, hospital, commisary, library, and all were. There were more housing there, too.

Beeville is a small -ish town, not bad at all. I loved going to the library there. Well, every single place we lived, one of the first places I’d find was the library. Of course! haha 🙂

One thing everyone did here was take empty jugs, travel up to the base, and fill them with water. There was a spigot that everyone used. It’s because the local tap water was way too salty. I guess the water on the base came from a different place, because it was nice tasting water. As far as I know back then there were not those special water filling places like you see everywhere these days.

Let’s see what else … In the evenings I could look out the back door and see bats emerging from the attic vents in the houses across the way. We were here when there was a total, or mostly total eclipse of the sun happened. Very eerie when going from bright sunlight, to darkness in the middle of the morning! It was like a hush came over the land, so quiet … the birds settled down to sleep, and the street lights came on. Then of course the sun came back out and all went on as normal.

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Next time: The girls and I move back home to my parents house for a year, because the Mr.’s next duty assignment was to South Korea.

I don’t know that that counts. It was another move, but to the same house I grew up in.

After that year, we moved on down to Killeen TX, and Fort Hood Army base housing.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 17

House # 17

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This is the next house we moved to. It was in Sinton, in south Texas. It is 16 miles from Corpus Christie TX and the Gulf of Mexico and the beaches.

Basically this house was a trailer house, but permanently settled. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a laundry room. It was okay, and I guess we lived there at least a year.

The Mr. had been assigned to running the Army Reserve Center there.

The second photo shows the back of the house (the first one I googled the address).

We had a huge banana tree in the back yard, and also a peach tree. That was so fun picking bananas from the tree each morning to have with our cereal. One time the Mr. brought in a bunch and a long green snake fell out into the kitchen floor. Well, me and the girls screamed and ran! haha 🙂

We’d also see roadrunners in the back yard, and the railroad tracks were pretty close behind our house, too. The girls would wave to the engineer and conductor when it passed by.

And … there were hobos! Hobos would jump off the train and come to the back door to ask for food. I’d make them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they’d be very grateful and be on their way.

I also had my first encounter with fire ants! They were everywhere, and man can they bite! You had to be careful of where you were standing, because they’d swarm up your feet and legs and latch on. Very painful!

We also had to get ready for a hurricane that was possibly going to come to Corpus Christi. Being so close to the coast even we had to prepare. We were lucky though, as it veered another direction and didn’t hit us. I think it came ashore more toward Houston that time.

Oh, another thing … we had some furniture with us this time. We had the same big old couch, a coffee table, and a rocking chair that used to belong to my mom & dad. We had a nice refrigerator, and beds for everyone. Yay! The only thing we didn’t have was a stove, but though one came with this rent house, it didn’t work at all. The landlord kept saying he’d get us another one, but it took forever, like right before we moved again, we finally got a working one.

So, I had to cook everything in the microwave. It worked out pretty good though. We did have an electric popcorn popper  – a stir crazy – that had a heated place, so I’d fry eggs on there, or make pancakes on it. So weird, but it worked.

First photo is the front of the house (I googled to find it, as I didn’t have a photo)

Second photo I took of the back of the house showing the big banana tree that was taller than the house. There came a freak freeze in the winter and it destroyed the banana tree. So sad.

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Next up we get government housing again in Beeville TX (still in south Texas)

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 15 & 16

House # 15 & 16

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So, we came back from Japan and the Mr. was assigned back to Ft. Sill Oklahoma. We lived in the town of Lawton, which was right outside the post. While he was getting situated, the girls and I stayed back home with my parents until he could find us a house.

But the first one he found was so awful! We’d had everything shipped to this horrible house, but we didn’t stay there but a very short time. We just had to find something better. I mean, this house was filthy, the carpets sticky and trashy, I didn’t want to touch anything, much less let the girls in there. And the bedroom windows were falling out at the slightest touch. Ugh!!

So we finally found another place which was very much nicer. This one in the photo below.

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I looked on Google Street Maps to find the address we lived at back then. Of course this is many years later in this picture, but it sure looks familiar. I know it was a white brick house, and there was a pine tree in the front yard. The tree sure has grown!

This house had three bedrooms, a bath, living room and kitchen/dining room and a garage. The back yard was large and fenced in. We were here for I’m sure a year or more.

The house was not furnished. It was a rent house though, and had a stove and a small kind of old fashioned refrigerator. I think it had a kitchen table and four chairs. We had no furniture to bring with us from Japan, either, except for my youngest girl’s baby crib. The rest of us slept on the floor, and just sat on boxes in the living room.

Finally, awhile later on, my cousin sent a big overstuffed couch and a funny large brown chair, by my uncle in Oklahoma City when he came by one day. I don’t know how to describe that chair. It was fuzzy kind of material, and had a sloping kind of shape? the kids liked to use it for a slide. haha! Awhile later we did manage to get beds.

We didn’t have a washer or dryer, so I’d either take clothes to the laundromat, or I’d wash everything in the sink on a rub board, and hang it all out on the clothesline to dry.

We had a huge honeysuckle vine right outside the kitchen window. It smelled so good, so I’d leave the window open.

My oldest girl started pre-school there in town, and had a few friends in the neighborhood. One’s big sister (they lived behind our house) would play her stereo loud all the time, mostly “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen!

~ next up we move to south TX

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS